The Magical Flight of Dodie Rue (19 page)

Rollie stared at the letter in his hand, his brown eyes wide with excitement.

“Who would send him mail?” Edward, an older brother, snorted.

“I
don't even get mail and I have a girlfriend,” Stewart, Edward's twin, added.

“Maybe that's it!” Edward exclaimed, grinning his lopsided smile. “Got a secret girlfriend, Rollie? I'll bet it's Cecily Brighton!”

“I wish I'd get a letter,” Lucille, a younger sister, pouted.

“Me too!” Daphne, her twin, chimed.

“Find a boyfriend and you'll get mail,” Edward quipped.

Stewart slapped a high-five with his twin. The two teens snickered and elbowed each other.

“Stop it, boys. Let Rollie read it aloud,” Mrs. Wilson scolded as she brushed Rollie's sandy-blond hair with her fingers.

Rollie cleared a dry throat unnecessarily. In a high voice common to boys of eleven years, Rollie read the letter aloud. When he was finished, the entire Wilson family started talking at once with high-handed opinions, as was their custom.

“Whoever heard of the Sherlock Academy?”

“Why Tuesday?”

“It's the first of the month.”

“I want a letter!”

“Me too!”

“Get a boyfriend.”

Amidst all the banter around the breakfast table, Rollie sat silently regarding his hash browns, the only food he ever ate for breakfast. His middle fluttered with butterflies. He felt that flutter when he was excited, like on his birthday, on Christmas day, on the first day of school, and when solving a mystery. Most children his age became very hyper when they felt this flutter in their middles. Perhaps they nagged their parents to no end, or galloped around the house squealing, or did something really naughty like peek at their presents. But in the Wilson household, there was never a need for Rollie to behave this way. Everyone else was louder or more hyper, which, oddly enough, calmed him. Such was the case at the breakfast table laden with pancakes, eggs, and hash browns.

Rollie folded the letter and tucked it in his brown trouser pocket. As he tuned out everyone's comments, he noticed the usual absence of one family member's opinion. He threw a sideways glance at his great-aunt Eileen, who sat primly sipping her tea and holding her tongue. She was thin and of average height, though she always appeared taller because of her upright posture and her tendency to look down her nose at people. She kept her gray hair in a bun atop her head, which also added to her height. Her gray eyes never missed a thing, and the wrinkles on her pale face made her look wise, which she was.

He picked up his fork and poked his hash browns. He scooped up a bit, brought it to his nose, and sniffed. Nope, no use eating at a time like this. Whenever he felt that flutter, his appetite vanished until the excitement resolved. Maybe it was good he got that flutter only three times a year, otherwise he might be even skinnier than he already was.

Rap-rap-rap!

Mr. Wilson rapped his knuckles on the table to get everyone's attention. “Enough, enough! I will lay out the facts and there will be no more talk of this until Tuesday.”

Mr. Wilson taught mathematics at the local Regent's College and loved facts as much as he hated speculation. He embodied the role of a professor in his tweed suit, perched spectacles, and straight-combed hair. “Fact: this letter is addressed to Rollie, so it follows that it's no one else's business.” He turned a warning eye at Lucille and Daphne who were uncommonly nosey for seven-year-olds. “Fact: the orientation will answer all our questions. Fact: the orientation is not until Tuesday, so there is nothing we can do until Tuesday. Conclusion: this conversation is summed.”

Mr. Wilson stood from the table and marched out of the dining room, his morning paper tucked under his arm.

Mrs. Wilson also stood, and smoothed her blue print dress. “Edward, Stewart, don't be late today or you just might get fired. Girls, you have dance lessons at nine. Auntie Ei, if you have any errands, I can drive—”

“No thank you, Eloise.” Auntie Ei rose briskly to her feet and swept away quickly despite her eighty-odd years.

“Rollie, your violin lesson is cancelled today. Mrs. Trindle is feeling under the weather.” She smoothed his sandy-blond hair and shooed him on his way.

Rollie smiled as the family dispersed. He cared less for violin lessons now than when he first begged his mother for them. He had wanted to play the violin for the sole purpose of mimicking Sherlock Holmes, and enjoyed it to some extent. But he disliked Mrs. Trindle because she smelled stale and flicked the underside of his wrists to “improve the posture,” so she said. No violin lesson meant no other plans for the whole day, which spelled freedom until suppertime.

Rollie raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, pulling himself up by the polished banister. At the end of the hall on the second floor, he mounted twelve more stairs leading to the top of the house. He flew into his watchtower-like bedroom. Being the middle child with no twin did have its advantages: his own bedroom. Though it was the smallest bedroom in the large house, he did not complain, for the house was a gift from Auntie Ei.

Auntie Ei was a lady of property. Long ago, she had passed down the Wilson manor to Rollie's father as an early inheritance on the condition that she would live with them. This meant a crotchety addition to the family and a small room for Rollie. No one understood the reason she chose to live with the family since she was annoyed by all of them—all of them except Rollie. She had a keen interest in him, and a degree of affection for him. When he was old enough to read she had given him his first Sherlock Holmes book, which had planted the thrill of being a detective in Rollie. Despite her partiality toward him she had not been able to secure him a proper bedroom in the house.

But Rollie loved his little room. It had one window overlooking Mr. Crenshaw's garden next door—a great view for spying. Best of all, he was allowed to keep his room any way he wanted.

On the wall nearest the window, he had covered the surface with cork to tack up clues and notes from the cases he solved. On his desk below the window, a telescope peeked through, kept company by a magnifying glass, a spyglass, and binoculars. The rest of his room was filled with boyish delights like a BB rifle, a model airplane, a pennant of his favorite rugby team, and books and books and books.

Rollie plopped down on the navy carpet next to his bookcase. He did not organize his books alphabetically by author or title or even topic like the family's private library downstairs. Instead he organized them by personal rating. Stuck to each shelf, a little label explained his rating system.

The top shelf's label read in his best handwriting
Excellent Books, My Favorites
. The shelf below said
Good Books I Like
. Below that,
Okay Books That Were Sort of Good.
The last shelf read
Books I Didn't Really Like
. The reason he bothered to keep the books on this last shelf was for appearances only—he hated empty bookshelves. The books on all the shelves constantly shuffled around as he read new ones and added them, or re-read others and revised his rating.

Running his finger along the spines on the top shelf, he read each title lovingly, mental pictures from the stories hugging his mind. Tom Sawyer, Robin Hood, Peter Pan, Lancelot, Sherlock Holmes—

Rollie slid out one of four volumes:
The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
He opened the green hardcover and flipped through the worn pages to “The Adventure of the Empty House
.
”
These pages preserved smudges and creases from countless reads. This was his favorite story. He bookmarked it with an original telegram, from Sherlock Holmes to his comrade Doctor John Watson, that Auntie Ei had bought from an antiques auction and given to Rollie. The note read:
Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.

Rollie treasured this telegram, not only because it had been personally written by the great detective, but because he had earned it. A few summers ago Auntie Ei had commissioned Rollie to solve an important mystery for her: to find her sterling silver letter opener that had disappeared. She believed someone in the family had taken it. After questioning the Wilson suspects and searching the premises, Rollie found the letter opener and exposed the culprit, who turned out to be Edward. (He had swiped it from Auntie Ei's desk to etch his initials on the handlebars of his bicycle so it would not get confused with Stewart's matching bicycle.) When Rollie had spotted the telegram behind glass at the antiques auction, he knew exactly which Holmes case it was from. This impressed Auntie Ei so much that she bought it for him as a reward for recovering her silver letter opener, and for being a shrewd Sherlockian. Rollie kept the telegram safely in the Sherlock Holmes book Auntie Ei had given him.

Rollie set aside his book for Tuesday. But .
 . . He fished out the Sherlock Academy letter from his pocket and read it again.

We request that you bring only the following item and nothing else: your favorite book.

What he had picked out was his favorite
story
; but, when it came down to it, the whole volume was his favorite
.
Suddenly, he was not sure about bringing a Sherlock Holmes volume. Would every other student bring one also since they were visiting the
Sherlock
Academy? Maybe the school would frown upon that, thinking he brought it in hopes of being accepted.

He scanned the top shelf again. Maybe a different book. He had other favorite books.

No.

Sherlock Holmes remained his ultimate favorite. He revered that detective; Holmes was his hero. His siblings teased him about it.

“He doesn't have any special powers,” Edward had pointed out.

“He has the power of deductive reasoning,” Rollie had argued.

“Any human can have that,” Edward had snorted. “Can he fly or stop a moving train? Does he even have muscles?” Edward had struck a pose in an attempt to show off the sinewy muscles outlining his tall, lean body. “No? Not a hero to me, then.”

“He's smarter than Superman,” Rollie had insisted.

“What does that matter?”

Rollie did not care about his brother's opinion. He knew Holmes was a worthy hero. Holmes did have muscles, for he was exceptional in boxing and fencing. He could disguise himself, identify all types of cigar and pipe ash, and solve any mystery simply by observing and reasoning. Rollie wanted to be just like him.

Maybe this Sherlock Academy would show him how .
 . . if that was even what it was all about. No way of knowing until Tuesday. He leaned against his bed and flipped open the volume again. He started reading his favorite case for the umpteenth time just to refresh his memory in case they quizzed him about it on Tuesday.

“Hallo, Rollin Holmes!”

Rollie snapped his head up from his book. “Hallo, Cecily Watson.” He hid the book behind his back. “Guess which case I'm reading.”

“Good detectives don't guess, they deduce.” His best friend, Cecily, bounced into the room, her curly, auburn ponytail bobbing around her neck. She wore a pair of brown slacks too big for her, with the legs rolled up above her ankles and the waist scrunched by a belt to keep them up. She wore a green cardigan with a little patchwork bird on one shoulder. “Your favorite Holmes book is missing from your bookshelf—the green one. I noticed before you closed the book that you were reading at the beginning. The first story in that volume is “The Adventure of the Empty House.” Although I should have known from the beginning—it's your favorite. I love “The Adventure of the Dying Detective.”
Brilliant!”

“Did you steal your brother's trousers again?”

Cecily wrinkled her nose peppered with freckles. “Yeah. Mum still won't buy me my own pair. She says it's not ladylike.”

“It's not.”

“But I can't climb fences and crawl through bushes and spy in a dress,” she pointed out.

“Mr. Crenshaw is in London today, remember?”

“I know. Ooh, which reminds me! The Secret Delivery Case .
 . .”

“Mrs. Pratcher ordered tulips from Graves Florist,” Rollie told her.

“Right.” Cecily gave a curt nod. “Only Graves Florist delivers flowers in silver boxes. How do you know she ordered tulips?”

“There was an advertisement in Friday's paper that tulips are half off,” said Rollie. “I dug out Mrs. Pratcher's paper from her rubbish bin and noticed she had cut out the advertisement.”

“Nice. There's another case wrapped, Holmes.” Cecily pulled out a small pocket notebook and a stubby pencil from her back pocket.

Rollie reached over and grabbed the same from his desk. They both flipped through a few pages of notes, then scratched check marks next to
Secret Delivery Case
found
at the bottom of a long list of cases they had solved so far that summer.